I can't import materials or textures from OBJ or 3DS
Strangely, I had a similar problem with 3DS in cycles, but was able to apply textures and materials perfectly in Blender render.

In Blender Render, I needed to play around in the materials and textures panel a little, opening one of the image files. The rest were automatically applied, but I needed to add a lamp to see it. 

For Cycles, I had to open nodes and do the textures that way.